


Sanchez All The Way Down

by antsinmyeyesjohnson



Category: Rick and Morty
Genre: Alcoholism, Bell-Curve of Grandparent Genital Phenotypes, Corpse Rummaging, Gen, Gentle Exploration of Existential Dread, Gross Parental Negligence, Help, Reluctant Bonding
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-27
Updated: 2016-09-06
Packaged: 2018-08-11 08:55:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7884748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/antsinmyeyesjohnson/pseuds/antsinmyeyesjohnson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>SomeBODY once told me, broh!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Smell this, dawg

**Author's Note:**

> This is fine.jpg

"Morty," Rick announced. "Smell something for me."

Rick leant into the kitchen from atop the basement stairs, italicised against the doorframe and proffering a large steel coffee jug at a tilt. 

Morty glanced up from a mouthful of cereal, already alarmed.   
"I don't know, do I have to?" 

Skeptically, he took Rick in; he was in pinkish, wet latex gloves that sucked his arms to the elbow, and a filthy barbequeing apron he'd stolen from Jerry - the second O in "KISS THE COOK" having been partially scratched away in a symbol of ownership, or something. The apron also bore a spreading stain that looked like it smelled. It seemed unlikely that any sniffing transactions were going to be pleasant, Morty thought, looking into his pulpy breakfast.

Rick flicked his eyes skyward and advanced on the dining table.   
"Well, it's gonna count towards your final grade, so-" he said, neatly thrusting the jug under Morty's face. 

"Aw, dawg, fucking--" Morty jerked back into his chair, his shoulder meeting Rick's expectant free hand. A few specks of harsh, thin fluid flicked up from the jug and onto the underside of his chin. "WHY," he demanded fiercely, wiping furiously at his neck. Rick coughed a laugh.

"What's that smell like to you Morty, y'little wiener? Pop Quiz." He asked, clapping Morty stickily on the shoulder and looking at him with a perilous, manic sort of expression that - to be honest - wasn't all that congruent with asking his grandson to sniff a mystery fluid at nine in the morning on a Sunday.

"C'mon," Rick prompted, crouching next to Morty's chair, his excited face close. Rick, as usual, stank overbearingly of uncapped permanent markers, machine grease and something else cloying that was probably whiskey-puke. It was a bit much, really, thought Morty, his stomach already feeling delicate and lurching with anxious fluids. 

"Um." Morty said, suddenly cognizant, looked into the jug. The stuff was kind of blue and cloudy; immediately recognizable, and, surprisingly, not even that unpleasant.

"Actually. Mouthwash, I think?" 

Rick whipped the jug back out from over Morty's breakfast and lurched up triumphantly.  
"That's right, Morty, mouthwash," he said, already halfway back across the room. 

Morty looked at Rick, expecting something else, but Rick was shaking his head to himself with an odd little expression on his face. "Fucking mouthwash," he said at the door jamb, under his breath, with something sounding a little like amazement.

"Wh-" said Morty, as Rick stepped out of the room. 

"Are we-" Morty started again indignantly, raising his voice, "Did you really need me to smell that for you to know it was mouthwash?"

Hearing nothing but his grandfather's footsteps starting to descend the basement stairs, Morty huffed and walked out into the adjoining room. Rick, from the bottom of the stairs, turned and shrugged. 

"Y'ever hear of a second opinion?"

Morty rolled his eyes. "W-what are you doing that you need me to tell you what mouthwash smells like?" 

Rick looked at him with that same odd expression that he'd worn in the kitchen and inclined his head toward deeper into the garage. 

"Come down here," Rick said, "'Show you something."


	2. Don't smell this, dawg

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you didn't like anatomy class, this one may not be for you. Seriously though, cw bodybits - not necessarily as nature intended them.
> 
> Also, _italics_.

"Jeez Rick, it's really-- it's like a meat locker in here," said Morty, a sudden, intense chill clutching around under his shirt only a few steps down. He rubbed his arms. Upstairs it was an affably summer day, and usually the basement in June was stifling at best. Rick had been tinkering with perishables again.

"So to speak," Rick agreed, puffing a jaunty cloud of vapour and throwing Morty up a heavy sweater from the laundry basket. "Put this on." 

Morty did. It was - probably deliberately - one of Jerry's; Morty thought briefly about saying something, but Rick's eyebrow suggested he not look a gift horse in the mouth, so he didn't. He gratefully pulled the cuffs over his burning fingers instead.

Rick crowded him at the bottom of the stairs - now gloveless, and fingering around in a little tub of goo. 

" _This,_ " Rick said, simultaneously gripping Morty's face and daubing a haphazard fingerful of the stuff under his nose, "Is why I need you to tell me what mouthwash smells like, Morty." 

Rick kept hold of Morty's face as he squirmed like a pet dog trying not to swallow its medicine. A white-hot deluge of menthol-smell invaded his sinus, palate and lungs quick as a slap, pricking his eyes with tears. 

" _Ri-ick!_ " Scandalised, Morty tried to pry himself free, but Rick squeezed Morty's molars and shook his head slowly. 

"Leave it, you big baby. You'll thank me later." 

He released Morty's face and stepped back, looking stern. "Don't _touch_ ," he griped, as Morty blinked and massaged the dents from his cheeks. 

"I-I _wont,' geez!_ " Morty puffed irritably. The room was now powerfully minty, as well as cold. 

"Like I was just saying, Morty--" Rick said mildly - snapping a new glove to his elbow - even though he wasn't. "It's not _just_ mouthwash." He thumbed over his shoulder and tipped his head. "It's also stomach fluid."

Morty looked, and froze. On Rick's table, partially covered in white cloth, was a spectacularly dead human body - caved open from sternum to belly and swimming with watery looking blood. Its ribs cleaved shockingly outward, toothlike and sawn open, skin lips clamped back obscenely with bulldog clips. An organ, oily and dark sat on the dip of cloth over its groin like a creature. An array of soup bowls from the kitchen held other wet-looking unmentionables on the adjacent bench.

_How did I not notice before,_ Morty thought desperately, his throat closing. 

"Now, what kind of idiot swallows Listerine, Morty?" Rick said from across the room, lightly squeezing the organ atop the body's lap with an experimental air, _pap-pap_. A trickle of fatty tissue fell sickeningly to the floor. 

"A dead idiot," Morty managed, in a disembodied voice. 

"Breathe, dummy. It helps," Rick said, not unkindly, without looking up. "True. Dead idiots... And dead alcoholics. Looks like someone's stash ra-an out," He mused, smothering a belch against his shoulder. 

Morty wasn't really listening. He had seen his fair share of dead bodies... In fact, as far as most fifteen year-olds in the U.S. went, he was could count himself precocious in that regard. Even if you only counted human bodies. Even if you only counted human bodies he'd seen in his grandpa's basement. _Maybe not for most Morties, though,_ he thought dully. Despite this, he'd had fairly little experience being asked to identify stomach contents via aroma, which was something he didn't realise he should have been grateful for before now. His hands rose to his throat as he remembered the splashback he'd gotten on his chin earlier. 

"Don't Touch," pre-empted Rick from across the room, but Morty, feeling sick, hadn't heard. He was busy recalling - in Rick's voice, helpfully - how closely related were smell and taste. Morty hugged his middle, looking green.

"Urgh," he said. 

"O-kay. Ground Control to Major DingDong:" Rick said, only begrudgingly concerned. "He was dead when he got here, for starters." Rick picked up the dead man's arm and manoeuvered it into a shrug, grinning at Morty in a way he half-hoped was reassuring. 

"Also - a-a-and trust me here - he was a huge asshole who-- he had it coming."

"Rick," said Morty, his stomach plunging. His eyes were fixed on Ricks watch.

Rick's watch on the dead man's arm. Rick's watch on the dead man's arm, who had the exact same oil-dirty, long fingers as the hand holding it. Morty wasn't great at math, but his skills of deduction were improving. 

"You got it, kiddo." Rick affirmed, nodding. "C9-45. Not as good as he used to be, though." 

Morty sighed out a long, cloudy, minty breath, and crossed the room to look at his dead grandfather, studiously not touching his face.


	3. Stress is for kids

"So, uh--" Morty tried, determinedly not watching as Rick idly palpated a length of (kind of) his own intestine.

"How do I know you're my version of Rick, and that you're not-- not some imposter Rick who thought i-i-iit'd be funny to kill my grandpa and then make me watch you play around in his guts? Ha ha." 

Rick smirked. "I guess you don't, _Mooorty_ ," he said lightly, rocking sideways giving Morty a little nudge. He'd played the helping-Morty-distract-himself game a few times before, and it was fine. Who was he, really, to piss on a coping mechanism that didn't end in cirrhosis or a puked-in pillowcase? Or a Beth'd-in ex-wife? Ha-ha. Ouch. 

"Not giving me much credit on the not-drinking-dental-hygiene-products front though, in that case, Morty. Rude." Rick slid his hand down between two folds in the rubbery mass of the gut and felt around, just rummaging really. He crawled his fingers around something that he hoped was a kidney. Rick glanced edgeways at Morty, who was staring through the table and rocking back and forth on his toes like he was late for something. Bless. 

He cracked a small smile at that, though. "True, that's true Rick, sorry-" he added with a charitable little laugh. "We really should come up with something in case that ever happens, y'know? Like if I ever need to know you're really you, or whatever?" 

"What, like a-a-a safeword?" Rick laughed. Phrasing. He looked at Morty and raised his brow earnestly. "Mine's usually -eughp- Jerry." 

Collecting a hard shove, Rick cackled, his hands schlepping noisily out from the Rick on the table in a bloody entreaty. Morty gave him that face that he did when he was amused but annoyed about it, and crossed his arms.

"Okay, okay. It's true, but okay." Tiny globs of yellow fat wobbled and clung from his gloves in front of Morty's face. The two shared an appalled grimace, but a comfortable one. 

"So gross," lamented Morty - though, about the comment or the corpse goo, Rick couldn't be certain. He agreed either way. 

"Speaking of-" Rick said, turning his attention back to C9-45. "Check _this_ nightmare out, Morty." He snipped around with a pair of kitchen scissors and came back around holding a greyish, sagging thing littered all over with hard bulby little lumps. "Ho-hoooo," Rick hefted it toward Morty in a sad little wiggling pantomime, admiring how completely gross and alien it looked for something that probably looked terribly like his own innards. The ones keeping him alive. Morty's eyes saucered in startled recognition.

"Ho, holy shit, Rick, is that your _liver_? Daaaang."

"It's obviously not _my_ liver, Morty, Jesus Christ. Unless you're talking to him-" Rick flapped the lump dispassionately towards the Rick from whence it came, "i-i-in which case, you're gonna wanna speak up." 

Morty ignored the jab and continued, looking green. "Is... Does yours look like that, too?" 

"I'm not a fucking Advent calendar, Morty--" Rick dodged, squinting at his own analogy and turning to deposit the gristly thing into a bowl full of vinegary preservative for later. Rick briefly hoped Morty was as stupid as he looked, object permanence-wise, but when he'd straightened up from plastic wrapping the bowl, Morty was still staring at him intently with the question written all over his face. 

"I-I-I mean," he tried, "Mine also has a bullet hole in it - which is like, a-a-a hundred times more badass." Seeing Morty's face crinkle even further into concern, he tacked on, with an air of finality, " _And_ I haven't regressed to drinking household cleaners like this dickhole, so. There's that." 

Morty nodded, quiet.


End file.
